Proof
by balai
Summary: Bella Swan stands at the edge of a cliff, yelling at who she believes is a hallucination. But he's not. Edward came back. Does she jump? Complete, Five part.
1. Chapter 1

**Author: .Forever Frozen. **

**Rated T.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own twilight. If i did, the cast for the movie wouln't make me double over in laughter.**

**So, this is AU. Takes place in New Moon, The cliff thing. I honestly just found a little sniplet of this in a random book half an hour ago and decided to write this up. This far, it's just a oneshot. I might change my mind though.**

**Enjoy.**

* * *

Bella swan couldn't stand the lies, she couldn't stand the hallucinations. The rain was pouring down, streaming in light rivulets down his face, over hers, and soaking them both in the storm's outburst.

Her hands were clenched by her sides, her fists straining against herself to keep from shaking. She was sure she'd have welts in her palms by the time she stopped imagining him. She was sure she was only imagining him. Because he couldn't be there. He didn't really care, he'd said so himself.

_Hadn't he_?

"Bella, please listen—"

But she couldn't listen to him. She'd listened to every word he'd said before; she just opposed him each time. Why should this time be different?

"I love you."

_No_. "You don't love me." If he'd loved her, he never would have left. If he loved her, he…

"_You don't love me_."

"I do." He took a step closer to her, holding his hand before him as if she was a frightened animal. She glared at him and forced her feet to move back, not towards him. She couldn't give in again because when he disappeared it would hurt that much more.

"No." She was at the edge of the cliff now, and if she even leant back too much she would fall back. Her head whipped around to look at the churning water, the long drop that it took to get down there…

She wondered how long it would take to fall. Er…dive. Bella Swan wasn't suicidal.

The man she loved so much was still before her, which bothered her deeply. He normally didn't last this long during a single apparition. But she'd take what she could get.

"I was wrong to leave you, Bella!" He was shouting to be hurt over the wind. She could hear him just fine though, she would always hear him even if he was whispering. It's not like she could block out someone in her own mind. "If I could take it back—"

"You can't take it back," She found herself yelling back. She wondered what she must look like from an outsider's view, standing on the side of a cliff in the rain screaming at nothing. But she'd long since stopped caring what others thought. Except him. "You can't ever take it back."

"Bella, please, walk back this way. That's not safe." His golden eyes were so much more _vivid_ than she remembered…

She laughed mirthlessly. "Safe? That's what this is all about, isn't it!? You don't love me; you just want me to be safe so that my blood isn't on your conscience!" Her jaw jumped, tears were streaming down her face, mixing with the rain. A shiver ran through her body, shaking her very core like a spasm.

"NO! I _do_ love you! That's why I wanted you to be safe—so you could have a _normal_ life!"

"Normal?" What did he know of normal? He was _Edward Cullen_. He was too perfect for anyone to ever mistake as normal, and he never had to worry about normalities. Because he was too. Fucking. Perfect. "I've tried to be normal. Unless you haven't noticed, it's not working!"

She'd forgotten that he wasn't real. She'd forgotten that he was only in her mind, that he was only saying what she imagined him to.

He would do whatever her mind imagined…

She grinned.

"Do you really love me, Edward?" Her voice croaked, trying to reach above the roar of winds. Her knees had locked and she didn't think she could move even if she tried. But this was it, wasn't it? He couldn't haunt her anymore.

"Very much so." She watched him take a few steps closer to her. _Now or never_…

Bella threw her arms to the side, backing slowly until her heel slightly overhanging the face of the cliff edge. She shook her head and smiled almost wistfully—_Goodbye_.

"Prove it." Then she fell back.

-

"_Searches for one Isabella Swan are still going, police forces have found no sign of a body. Her father, Chief of Police Charlie Swan, is leading the investigation—"_

Jacob growled, hurling the remote at the small glass screen in a scream of rage. He stood fuming, staring at the broken smoking glass, his body quivering.

"FUCK!"

Suddenly encased with sobs, Jacob fell to the ground, his hands pulling at his hair as he rocked back and forth on the floor. It was an odd sight to see, such a strong, independent man reduced to a sobbing mess.

He cried and couldn't stop crying for more than a day. And no one tried to stop him.

-

Bella Swan had screamed her last. Carlisle held a syringe up, eyelevel, and watched as a measured drop oozed its way from the needle tip. He looked beyond the tool to his son, his face tortured at the idea of what they'd done. Not that he was too thrilled with it either, but if they hadn't, they would have lost Bella and Edward, if not to death, to their own tortured minds and hearts.

He sighed. "It had to be done."

Edward's red eyes narrowed in on him. "Did it? If I had just stayed away—"

"Then she would have died for sure." Carlisle placed a hand on his son's shoulder and crouched down to his level. "Son, leaving her hurt you as much as it hurt her. There was no conceivable way that you would have been able to stay away. If you hadn't shown up when you did, we'd be burying her now instead of this." He held the sedative up.

"Are you going to come with me?" Edward nodded sullenly and followed his father through the narrow hallways to the room that Bella was in.

She was no longer strapped to the bed to keep from attacking herself—Carlisle had deemed her stable enough several hours prior to her silence. She was sitting in a dark corner of the room, her knees drawn tight against her chest, her eyes wide and violently red. What resembled tears streamed down her cheeks, to her trembling lips. She rocked back and forth in the corner.

Carlisle approached her and she stared at him, her eyes sad as he injected the tranquilizer into her system. She shook and muttered to herself, the same thing over and over.

"_You're not real. You're not real. You're not real."_

Carlisle sighed and turned to Edward. "Try to talk to her."

Edward sat across from her and smoothed her hair away from her face. Bella was still shaking. "Bella, I know what I did was wrong—I see that now." His thumb traced her lips as she continued to mutter her insecurities, and her wide eyes stared up at him in amazement. "I promise you I'm not going to give up on you."

"_Not real."_

"I love you." Edward's hands cupped her face, holding her head still so he would look straight into her eyes. "And I promise I'll spend forever proving it to you."

* * *

**I guess i have a little obsession with writing people that are off the deep end. Reply? Might make this longer.**

**xx Echo**


	2. Chapter 2

**Author: .Forever Frozen.**

**Rated T.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own twilight. I don't have enough drugs for that.**

**This was originally going to be a one shot, but i got a few reviews asking for more chapters. I sat down with a laptop and after nearly falling off my room, decided, hell, why not? So i wrote this. I also decided on a story line for this, but i'm sad to announce it's not really going to be happy. rather depressing when it comes down to it. And Bella will be insane for most of it. But i wrote this out, and i hope it's not terribly dissapointing. I really hope that, since this has clogged my mind, rendering me inable to write out my other fan fiction or original story...**

**Enjoy.**

* * *

It had been a year. A year since Bella had jumped (the first in a series of the most painful days of Charlie Swan's life) and a year since the prolonged search for her had started. It'd been a year since he'd learned the truth about Jacob Black, that the boy was a werewolf—which he still wanted to deny the existence of at times. He'd known Jacob as long as the boy had been alive. It couldn't be true.

Six months had passed since Charlie realized that those helping him look for her truly believed that Bella was gone. He had made it a point, day after day, to tell each and every one who opposed him that she _wasn't_. That she _couldn't_ be. But six months ago, none of them had the heart to tell Charlie that he was holding onto a ghost.

Four months had passed since the state had abandoned the search for his only daughter, deeming her officially dead. For those four months, Charlie Swan didn't find himself with dry eyes a single day. But he refused to believe that she'd died. Something in him knew she hadn't—she was his _daughter_, after all. His own flesh and blood. He'd _know_ if she was dead. He'd know…

Two months had passed since his dear friend, Billy Black, had been buried alongside his wife. Billy was sick, Charlie knew, but still he could not understand how he could just _leave_…Charlie needed him. Jacob needed him. They'd both lost the woman who held their hearts with such a strong grip in the palm of her hand. They both couldn't bear to stay for the entire funeral. The day of the funeral, the both of them had instead visited the very cliffs that Bella had jumped from, and both confessed that they had seen the signs, but denied them.

Now it has been a year since Charlie Swan last saw his daughter. If he'd known then that he was going to lose her, he never would have let her go. He would have said something, anything, to hold her back; to keep her from leaving on that fateful day.

Charlie hadn't been sober for three weeks. Three weeks, he'd called in sick to work, and no one questioned him. He was the chief of police. And they all knew what anniversary was coming close.

So everyone was surprised when he showed up on the very day that his daughter—the _perfectly innocent_ Isabella Swan who _could do no wrong_—had killed herself the year before to his work. That day Charlie had completely emersed himself in his work, not letting even the smallest detail of the day slip by.

That was the day that Charlie Swan decided he wasn't going to give up.

-

It had to have been those damn bloodsuckers. Jacob knew it. He could smell it, so strong, on the cliff because for the first time in the whole year since she'd jumped, Jacob's mind was clear. He could think rationally. He supposed that losing two of the most important people in his life made that happen. His father, the girl he loved…

But he hadn't really _loved _her, Jacob realized. At least, not the way he thought he had. When Bella jumped, he had wanted to be with her for the rest of his life, for them to grow old together, he'd hoped that maybe one day she'd love him as much as he loved her and in the same way. But she loved the leech. And today, on the mark of day she jumped, he said that without any animosity to the vampire.

Because Jacob Black realized he'd loved her like a sister. Sure, she was beautiful and fun—when she wasn't depressed—but when it came down to it, that was all there was. He cared about her deeply, he always would, but she never made his heart sing. She never made him truly _want_ to go out of his way to make her happy, like how Sam did for Emily. He wasn't sure if it was just infatuation at the time. But now, looking back, Jacob figured it might have just been in spite of the _vampire_.

The leech had loved her and had left her. He hated the leech. So if _he_ loved her and _stayed_, she'd surely see that he was better…

_Wouldn't she_?

It hadn't worked. The date engraved on the headstone on the face of the cliff was solid evidence that his theory was complete bullshit. But he didn't mind that.

He just cared that his best friend was gone. And, if what he smelled in the lingering winds was right, it would be better for both of them that way.

But that didn't make it hurt any less.

-

It had been a year since Bella had thrown herself over the cliff with absolutely no intent of making it out of the water alive. For five months after that, Bella was nearly comatose, holding herself in a corner of her room muttering the same thing. If she'd suffered from newborn bloodlust, she was a hell of an actress with the way she hid it. But none of it was real, so why would the burning be?

Carlisle had grown weary. Every day he had to bring her something to drink, sometimes having to go so far as to _force_ her to drink it, just so that her body wouldn't completely reject itself. With her current state of mind, a feeding frenzy was the last thing any of them could tolerate.

But after the fifth month, Bella had laughed at herself. She sat in the corner and held her hands in front of her face and _laughed_. Edward had been sitting across from her, talking softly, humming her lullaby, trying desperately to reach her, when he heard a tinkling sound emerge from the frail girl's throat. She looked over at him and smiled.

He thought that perhaps she had finally realized he wasn't in her mind.

But he'd never been able to read her thoughts.

Bella shifted onto her knees and stared at him for what must have been hours. Her orange eyes looked over him, taking in his face, his eyes, his body…then she laughed.

He didn't want to say anything, lest he break whatever was causing her to respond.

She looked around the room. "This is strange…"

Edward frowned. "What's strange?"

Bella smiled. "I could tell that Charlie was going to ship me off to a mental institution. I just didn't know that I was _this _bad." She sighed and ran her hands through her hair.

His brow furrowed. "Bella, you've not been committed."

She arched a brow and nodded, the corner of her mouth lifting in amusement as her eyes went wider. "See, that's exactly what you'd be telling me. Because you just say what I want to hear."

Edward realized that she hadn't come to terms with this. He shook his head. "You're not imaging me, Bella."

Bella straightened up, and waved her hands around. "See, you'd say that _too_." She waved her hands around the room. "See, this room isn't real. And you're not real. It's in my mind." She tapped on her temple, acting out her words as if explaining it to a child. Then she laughed again.

"But I guess you're all I have to talk to. And I wouldn't want to go mad without someone to talk to while I'm insane, would I?"

* * *

**Well, i'd like to know what you think. I'm continuing this, but not all teh chapters will be this...similar, i guess. but i don't think the writing style will change. Bella will slowly be regaining her sanity, though. I feel bad for carlisle :(**

**Reviews are appreciated.**

**xx Echo**


	3. Chapter 3

**I really hope the lines in this work. If not, i'll be a very unhappy person.**

**Third installment of this story and just as before y'all should be thankful i don't own twilight. Read and Enjoy, s'il te plait!**

* * *

It had been four years since the day the state had declared the beginning of the search for missing person Isabella Swan. It had been four months shy of four years since she had been claimed as dead and a service was held in her name. Her father, Charlie Swan, hadn't given up.

Jacob almost wished he'd had the gull to tell him to let it go. However, he hadn't. Before that, he'd watched Charlie (his only remaining family) wither away to a shell of who he used to be. Just like Bella had.

He hadn't known what drove him to do it that day. He'd just decided that he should drive out to check on the man who had shared his grief. He'd waited outside that house for six hours after nightfall until Charlie came home, looking more beaten and weary than anyone he'd ever seen before while still managing to be alive. His hands strained white with fury and Jacob jumped from the car and shook the older man by his shoulders. He didn't mean to hurt him – he didn't hurt him – but the message sunk in. Charlie needed to let it go. He needed to move on.

Not to forget, but to forgive. Because it was killing him.

Charlie had learned to forgive, and Jacob had been there for him all the way. It had been a hard battle for the both of them. Charlie struggled most to accept the fact that his daughter was gone. Jacob struggled most to keep himself from returning Charlie to his past state, living night and day to prove that his daughter was as well. Jacob struggled to keep himself from bitterly hating Bella for what he was watching her father—their father—go through.

After that, Charlie resigned from the police force.

Jacob had let himself really smile for the first time on the day of Charlie's wedding. Charlie did as well. Both were still plagued by a part in their heart that would never be filled completely, but they were healing.

* * *

Jacob Black didn't pay any mind to the rain pouring down on his back, running down his neck, soaking him to the bone. Any normal person would have been shaking from the cold and wet, but Jacob was not normal. He cursed that about him at times, but he had come to accept it.

He stilled his hand against the stone and pulled away from the headstone, glossing his eyes over his work. He didn't know if it would last, but if he knew anything about the bloodsucker's nature, he wouldn't be able to keep away from the spot for long. The two men had that in common.

A voice in his head whispered that he was masochistic.

Rather, a voice in his _ear_ whispered it.

A small cool hand slid across his back and Jacob reveled in the feel of the soft body sliding down next to his. The small girl ran her hand through her wet hair, pushing it from her blue eyes. She followed the messy scratch of his writing on the stone and shook her head. Written in a black marker, she knew that he'd come back every day to insure that the message remained until it was read by he who he intended it for if he had to. Come rain, snow, storm, hail, fire, or wind. He'd do it.

His persistence was his downfall. She hadn't known him before Bella Swan had left him a wreck, but she felt she knew him in a way that even Bella Swan never would. She knew him at his worst, at his best, and at the times he usually hid from everyone else.

And still he insisted they were nothing more than friends. Things were too complicated for him to accept—er, have any feelings for her right now.

Jacob's large, warm hand closed around hers and he rose to his feet, drawing her up to him. She smiled up at him, an understanding lit in her eyes that he swore he'd never see. She pushed against him, her arms tight around his waist as if he'd break. Jacob ran a hand through her rust red hair and his hand rested on her pale cheek. The girl looked up at him, smiling softly. He traced his thumb over her features.

"Why'd you come out here?" he asked. Jacob felt his heart clench in anticipation of what he already knew he'd hear. He pushed it off as nothing, though. He'd been wrong before—and _this_ couldn't be love. It couldn't be. It was so much more terrifying than anything he'd ever felt before.

She pressed her lips and looked at the memorial of his best friend. "Charlie called and I thought I should tell you before I left." Her teeth caught at her bottom lip and her eyes turned up to him. "I know you said you're getting past it, Jake, but this is the second month. It's going to make you sick."

His eyes hardened on the water beating against the cliff edge. She rested her face against his chest. "Chelsea, I promise you I won't let it. Have I ever broken a promise to you?"

She laughed. "No, Jake. You've never."

* * *

Bella laughed and kicked her pale foot against Edward's side. "You're such a liar."

His eyes were wide with a humorous denial. "I swear I'm not!"

"Prove it, then." Those words were the straw that broke the camel's back, so to say. Edward's smile turned strained and Bella stopped laughing, the joy draining almost feasibly from her gamboge eyes. Edward let his drift closed and he sighed, calming himself. Outside the window, the snow fell.

Bella pulled her arms against herself again and she rose slowly to her feet, walking to a dresser where she kept all her clothes. True to her beliefs, her room was decorated very simply with only a bed, dresser, and small armchair by the window. If she thought she was in an asylum, who was she—or rather the manifestations of her mind—to convince herself differently. She needed that much to keep her grounded.

She pulled out a dark green sweater from the drawer and took her time putting it on. Edward groaned and let his head drop into his hands. This happened every time. He'd start to get her to believe him, then something would happen and she'd just skip back three spaces and throw up a wall. Granted, she still spoke to him, but Edward began to wonder if she'd only ever just talk to him the same way she used to talk to Alice.

"What are you thinking?" Edward couldn't stand the deafening silence. The one time in his prolonged life that he had complete silence and he wished it was filled with words. With anything.

Bella's head snapped towards him, her eyes narrowed lethally. "As if you don't know."

"Bella, I can't read your mind. I never have been able to."

"But you're _in_ my mind. You know what I'm thinking, you're just playing along to piss me off so you'll keep me from getting over you. You'll just keep coming back and then I'll never be allowed out of here because you'll still be here trying to ruin everything—"

"Bella—"

Bella hurled a book from atop her dresser at him. "Don't. Just go." She went to stand by the window, staring out into the unending white of the snow, her arms crossed in front of her. Unresponsive, Edward realized he wasn't going to get her to change her mind. Whenever she got like this, it was best to just leave.

She heard the door close slowly behind him. Bella wished she didn't just have to _imagine_ that she could sleep. Growing up, Renée had always told her that dreaming helped solve the problems facing her mind in the day. If she slept, she wouldn't have to imagine him. Maybe if she could fall asleep, she'd wake up and find him lying next to her and it would all be a dream.

She knew she was insane. Because that would have meant he loved her.

* * *

Edward's hand rested on the handle long after the oak door remained shut. The difference between her room, cold and empty and bare, and the hall outside it was shocking. Out here, his family had left their touches on the walls, painted a rich green, with pictures aligned perfectly on the walls. Edward wished he could get her to, just for once, walk out from her room. Maybe she'd realize she wasn't in an asylum then. She'd—

He'd almost quit hoping.

Alice's usually dance-like steps drew near him and Edward felt himself look up at her, though he did not realize he'd done so until she shook her head and grabbed him by the wrist. The two stood by the paneled door in the kitchen, just staring out into the trodden snow, and saying nothing. He had nothing to say. Nothing was different.

"I don't know what I'm doing wrong, Alice," he finally admitted weakly. She said nothing. "I don't know what I have to do. I used to have a plan—I'd earn her trust back, then she'd start to believe. But…"

_It isn't working_.

Alice was no mind reader, but she still knew that. She nodded her head and brushed her bangs from her eyes. "I know, Edward."

He sighed. "I'm starting to think that maybe—"

"No, Edward," Alice leaned back against the counter. "I _know_. I know what we have to do."

* * *

**Review, please. One more chapter after this one, should be up very soon.**

**xxEcho.**


	4. Chapter 4

**The very last chapter. And hey, lookie there, it's up way soon.**

**DOn't own twilight, let's keep it that way. Not gonna insult it in a FAN fiction place, though. **

**Read and Enjoy, please. Review too!**

**Hope that this is kinda an...enlightening ending. Boosting spirits and all that.**

* * *

Seven years after Isabella Swan's suicide, it seemed the world had finally started spinning right on it's axis.

And then she found out.

Emmett hadn't meant to have the television up so loud, he just couldn't stand the silence stretching throughout the house. How was he to know that they'd announce it?

"_Today, on the anniversary of his daughter's suicide, former Chief of Police Charles Swan and his family—"_

She didn't even wait to hear what happened. Isabella bolted out the door into the pouring rain.

Emmett blinked. Oh…shit.

Edward was going to kill him.

* * *

After saying his last goodbyes to Charlie and Nina and little Bethany, Jacob threw his last box into the bed of his truck. Bethie ran down the front walk to stand shyly in the mist. She ran forward a few steps, then back a few with her thumb in her mouth before she launched herself at his legs. Jake smiled and scooped her up in his arms, making her squeal with laughter. At two and a half years old, Bethie was starting to look uncannily like her mother—only she had Charlie's eyes. Bella's eyes.

He pressed a kiss to her cheek. "I promise I'll come back to visit." His eyes sparkled with humour and she buried her face in his neck, her cheeks wet with tears. "I promise. Hey, look at me." she lifted up her adoring eyes to his and smiled, dimples splitting her cheeks when he grinned at her. "Have I ever broken a promise?"

Bethie muttered a 'no' with her thumb still in her mouth, shaking her head with her two-year old vigor.

Jake walked her up to the porch as the rain started to fall harder. "I promise you that I'll never break a promise to you."

Bethie took her thumb out of her mouth a moment and Jake tugged on her curly blonde pigtail lightly. "Okay. But you has'ta pinkie pwomise." She held up her tiny pinkie finger to Jake's mammoth one and he laughed, blowing a raspberry into her cheek. He set her down and wrapped his finger around hers.

"I promise." He brushed his hand over her cheek and smiled. "I'll see you soon, Bethie."

"I wove you, Jakey." Charlie stepped out the door and held his hand down for Bethany. He smiled sincerely at the tall young man, pride clear on his aging face.

"Good luck, Jake."

Jake stood to his full height and smiled back at him. "You too, Charlie. Take good care of my lil' sister, huh?"

Charlie nodded and Bethie buried her face in her dad's jeans. "I will." The older man looked up to the truck and chuckled. "You better get going before your girl dies of old age."

"Bye," Jake said with a wave. He ran through the rain to the cab of the truck and opened the driver's door, settling into the warmth of the seat. He rested his hand against the steering wheel.

Chelsea reached over and rubbed his shoulder. Her kind eyes gazed up at him in concern. "Are you sure you want to leave today? We could wait another night if you want to." She was in no rush. She had everything she needed sitting right beside her.

Jake shook his head and started up the engine, bringing the wipers to life. "No," he said calmly, "It's time. It's time to go." Something was happening today, but he couldn't stay for it. Because if they didn't leave now, they never would. She understood that. Chelsea took her hand back and settled back into the seat, putting her feet up on the dashboard.

She laughed. "Alright, then. Here we go."

Jake shook his head. "Look out New Orleans."

"Ain't that the truth."

* * *

Bella ran through the forest, her feet bare and crunching against the crisp leaves that had yet to be soaked by the rainfall. She moved quicker than she'd ever believed she could and with more grace than ever before. She jumped over fallen trees and down slopes and by the time she'd reached her destination, she was caked in mud.

Her feet drummed against the ground until she reached the ever-familiar cliff face and only then did she stop when she came across a headstone. She slid to her knees right before it, the ground muddy and slick with rain where she nearly slammed into the stone. Her hands came to brace herself against it, framing the engraved words perfectly.

_1987-2006  
Isabella Marie Swan  
Loving daughter,  
Faithful friend.  
Gone but forever in  
our hearts._

She didn't see the sprawled handwriting at the top corner of the stone, or if she did she couldn't make out what it said. Tears that Bella had long since thought she'd lost blurred her wide-eyed vision and she stared at the words, trying to make sense of the gibberish invading her mind.

Gone? She wasn't gone. Charlie had sent her away, sent her because she was beyond help. Hadn't he?

She wasn't dead, she…

Charlie.

Bella jumped up and ran again.

* * *

She hadn't realized that she'd been able to recognize where she was going by scent. She hadn't actually thought about it while she ran, hadn't thought how she knew her way through the deepest woods between Forks and La Push. She couldn't think at all…

Except that Charlie had to know. He had to know she was alive.

The driveway at Charlie's house was empty but his scent was so heavily imbedded in the structure that she figured it must have just been a strange occurrence. She climbed her way up the thick vines on the side of the house to what used to be her window, knowing that at all else, the lock was broken clean off. She pried the rusted pane up and pushed herself through. It slammed shut behind her loudly.

The house was still, not a sound anywhere, not a heartbeat or a breath. Her room, however, was nearly the same. Her bed was there, still made as she'd left it seven years ago. Her ancient computer was missing, her rocking chair as well, and her closet doors were open wide, her closet stripped of most of her possessions.

Bella, shocked, stood still in the middle of the wood floor.

"Charlie?"

She walked slowly, with marked precision, to the door and sucked in a breath of anticipation as she turned the handle, not noticing the extra force it took to get it open. She kept a hand on the wall as she ventured down the hallway. The first door was open, leaving an empty bathroom behind it. She paused, but kept going. From what she could see, the whole first floor of the house below her was stripped bare with only stains and shadows decorating the walls and carpet. Her pace increased.

Charlie's door had always had an annoying creak to it and this time was no exception. It swung open loudly, making her jump, and she stepped inside. Bella wished she could cry again. It smelled like her father, that familiar smell that always comforted her before. But it looked like something out of her nightmares.

There was no blood on the walls like in her dreams, however, and she didn't find her father's mangled corpse in the closet.

It was bare.

Not even a shred of a curtain remained on the window. Intentions from his bed still marked the floor and there was still a purple stain where Bella had spilled her grape juice one night during a particularly bad storm. But aside from that, there was nothing.

A hand rested on her shoulder and Bella screamed.

"Shh, baby, it's okay. It's just me."

She knew that voice.

Bella turned around to face him and Edward looked her over. "Thank god you're not hurt."

She swallowed back the disdain.

He took a step closer and she took a step back, feeling like a caged animal in the small dusty room that smelled like her father.

"I was so worried when Emmett told me you ran off." He looked around. "I…I had no idea you'd come here."

She gritted her teeth. "It's my home. Why wouldn't I come here?"

Edward ran his hand through his hair nervously. "Bella—"

She stepped back as if struck. "You left me, Edward."

He closed his eyes. "Yes, but—"

Bella shook her head tensely. "No, Edward." Her fists clenched at her side, wringing water and mud out of her shirt. "You _left_ me here _alone_. And the whole time Charlie was the only one who had any faith in me, who believed in me _at all_ and he was the one who kept me together." She swallowed back her tears. "Only I wasn't together. I was so torn up about you leaving that I started making up images of you."

_Not this again_, Edward thought miserably to himself.

She stepped around him in a circle, like a lion zeroing in on its prey. "Then that day that I felt so _tired_ of seeing you—of _**imaging**_ you—everywhere, you really _were_ there. And this whole time I've been so convinced that my father gave up on me, sent me away to a place so he wouldn't have to deal with having such a fuck up of a daughter.

"But he didn't give up on me. I know my dad and he wouldn't just give up. He searched for me like a man possessed but he wasn't looking for the right thing, was he?" Her brows drew together as she pieced it into her own words. "And now he thinks I'm dead.

"Because I am dead. I killed myself and you kept me alive." She frowned down at her feet. "the only thing I don't get now is…where's Charlie? Because he wouldn't leave here, wouldn't leave this place. He wouldn't leave me."

"He's gone, Bella."

Bella glared at him and shook her head. "No. Charlie wouldn't—"

"He's not here."

Her hands tensed into balls by her side. "You just don't get it, Edward, Charlie—"

"Charlie left, Bella!" Bella drew away from him more at his outburst as if she'd been slapped, and her eyes set with determination.

"No."

* * *

Charlie Swan sat on the dark blue couch in his home just south of the La Push reservation with his arm around his wife, Nina, whose stomach was bulging merrily in her seventh month of pregnancy. Their two-year-old daughter, Bethany, danced in front of them, showing off her ballerina grace with a wave of her fairy wand and a swish of her princess dress. The bright blonde mess of hair piled atop her head in what Nina claimed to be a bun stood out with stark contrast against the grey gloom and rain pouring outside.

Charlie smiled. The only thing that would have made this moment any better for him would have been if his Bella—his Jingle Bells—had been there with him. She and Jake completed the family, and now that they both were gone, the loneliness he hadn't felt since he'd met Nina was settling with unease once again.

But still Charlie Swan smiled. He smiled because he knew that even though he didn't know where, Bella was out there somewhere and she wasn't dead. He knew that she would make it through whatever she was going through. She was a smart enough girl, maybe a bit timid and naïve, but she would adapt to changes if she needed to.

He smiled because he knew that for the first time since her death, Jacob, the young man he loved as a son, was happy—truly happy—and he had someone who he could really be with to share his happiness with. That was something they both knew he'd never have with Bella. And she would never have that with him. He just hoped she was happy now.

Because he was finally happy.

He glanced up and he _knew_ his daughters were alive and safe.

* * *

Bella gripped onto the tree branch outside her father's new home. Large welts shaped like her fingers splintered the bark. She stared enviously into the living room, but felt guilty. Who was she to be jealous? She could have been happy like that with Charlie and his family had she just given him a chance. But she'd chosen to end her own misery and start his as a chain reaction.

She'd been selfish. She was glad Charlie wasn't suffering because of it.

Her father smiled and looked wistfully out the window and she knew he knew. She could have sworn he saw her.

She wouldn't ruin her father's happiness or that of his family by imposing on their new life. She couldn't do that to him and she knew that if she was happy, he would never do that to her.

Bella knew he must have been losing his touch (in her mind she joked that it was his age catching up to him) because she could hear his footsteps for three miles. He finally stood right behind her.

Bella did not turn away from the family her father loved. She stared in the window, her hair plastered to her face, her clothes drenched, and smiled. Really smiled for the first time. It wasn't a full-blown, Hollywood practiced smile. But it was genuine.

Her voice was scratchy and worn, as if she hadn't spoken in years. Appropriate, she figured, for a new start.

"Edward," she whispered, reaching back for his hand. "I believe you now."

It was all going to be okay.

* * *

_Cullen—_

_You hurt her, I hurt you._

_-J. Black_

* * *

**The end. Hope you liked it. Please Review.**

**xxEcho out.**


	5. Chapter 5

**I'm such a bloody liar. Final chapter for sure, because i thought it needed a little more than what it had. Bethanie's smart, she deserved this much.**

**Don't own twilight.**

* * *

Thirty –one years after the death of his first daughter, Charlie Swan –age seventy-four—died. Peacefully and in his sleep, but no one felt any less grief because of it. His wife of twenty-seven years, Nina Swan, and their daughter, Bethanie, and son Billy were hit the hardest by the death. At least, as far as they knew.

Bethanie, twenty-six years old, stood in the rain and gloom of Forks at the grave of her father. Her younger brother, only two years younger than she, had left town the minute the ceremony was over. He had never been one to grieve and to do so in the company of other was completely unthinkable. Jacob had come by to see her, to check on her, and she had cried to him for no longer than ten minutes before she jumped away and ran out into the yard of the cemetery.

She'd been standing there for more than an hour before she realized she was not alone.

The woman was flawless, not a single blemish on her porcelain face, and she stood at a petite height just taller than Bethanie herself. Her eyes were brown and dulled in the rain, and a pain Bethanie never thought she'd be able to see on a person stared out at her through them. The woman's sandy blonde hair was matted to her face so delicately that it looked as if Hollywood had pulled her out of filming a movie and stuck her in Forks.

The only real imperfection Bethanie could find was the dark purple shadows beneath her large eyes and the tears that dripped from them.

"Did you know him?" Bethanie found herself asking with a raw voice she hardly recognized at all. The woman, startled, snapped her neck up to look at Bethanie and stared at the girl who appeared to be several years her elder. Bethanie found herself transfixed with the woman's eyes—the exact eyes she saw in the mirror every morning and every night. Charlie's eyes.

The woman was doing the same.

She nodded. "I used to," she admitted in a voice that singers and harpies alike would be envious of.

Bethanie brushed her light blonde bangs from her forehead and smiled pathetically. "I'm sorry for your loss."

The woman blanched in disgust and shook her head. "No, don't be. It was my own fault." She looked back at Bethanie's face and winced in what seemed to be pain. "I'm sorry for yours, though. You're his daughter, I presume?"

Bethanie nodded. She couldn't shake the image of the woman's face—she could have sworn she recognized it from somewhere. "If I may ask, what was he to you?"

The woman wrung her gloved hands out and frowned down at the newly placed headstone announcing the death of the man they both held so dear to their hearts. She choked back the lump that was making it difficult for her to breathe, as unnessecary as the action was for her. "He…he's the reason I live." The woman said it with such assuredy that Bethanie couldn't pick up any reason for her to be suspicious. Were it her mother that the woman was talking to, she would undeniably be assumed to have had romantic encounters with Charlie. Bethanie shuddered at the idea—the woman looked apon him with such heartbreak, such agony, that nothing but paternal love could have existed there.

She suddenly realized where she recognized her from.

"You're…" she couldn't say it. Charlie had never said it, so she never could force herself to do so. "He loved you very much, you know."

The woman bit her lip, nodding madly, looking more like a child than a woman in that moment. Her eyes were too wide for her to have been breathing. "I know," she wretched out miserably. "I know, I know. I should have always known."

Bethanie stepped forward and hugged the cold woman, who jumped at the physical contact. "He never stopped believing you were alive, Bella."

In less than a second, the woman jumped back, alarmed. "How do you…" She already knew the answer.

"Jake told me stories. Charlie told me stories. Your eyes say what you haven't." She sniffled. "I'm Bethie Swan."

"Bella Swan," Bella held her hand out and shook Bethanie's. She reached up and ran a hand through her hair, looking back at the road with tortured eyes. "I'm not supposed to be here."

Bethanie smiled. "I won't tell." She held her hand out, pinkie extended. "I promise."

* * *

**Reviews, please. I hope you enjoyed it.**

**xxEcho**


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